'Laverne & Shirley' star plays Waterbury Palace

Joe Meyers

Published 5:23 pm, Thursday, November 1, 2012

Cindy Williams is starring in "Nunset Boulevard: The Nunsense Hollywood Bowl Show: which i being presented at the Palace Theater in Waterbury on Thursday, Nov. 8. The show is a fundraiser for the Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, where former movie star, Sister Dolores Hart has resided for the past 50 years.
Photo: Contributed Photo

Cindy Williams is starring in "Nunset Boulevard: The Nunsense...

Cindy Williams (center) is co-starring with Bambi Jones (left) and Stephanie Wahl in the touring production of "Nunset Boulevard" arriving at the Palace Theater in Waterbury on Thursday, Nov. 8.
Photo: Contributed Photo

Cindy Williams (center) is co-starring with Bambi Jones (left) and...

The cast of "Nunset Boulevard," set for the Palace Theater in Waterbury on Nov. 8, includes (clockwise from left) Bambi Jones, Cindy Williams, Stephanie Wahl, Christine Mild, Sister Mary Annette and Jeanne Tinker. The show is a fundraiser for the Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, CT.
Photo: Contributed Photo

But so far, publishers are more interested in juicy gossip than a behind-the-scenes view of some landmark movies and a classic TV show.

"I've thought about it a lot and wanted to do a book. But the title would be something my mother always told me, `If You Can't Say Something Nice,'" the actress said in a recent phone interview.

"I want to tell good stories, but that isn't what publishers want. They are looking for salacious dirt.

"Do I have (gossipy) things that I could write? Sure. But I wouldn't want it to be done to me, so I won't do it to others," she said.

The TV and film star is on the road with "Nunset Boulevard: The Nunsense Hollywood Bowl Show," which arrives at the Palace Theater in Waterbury on Thursday, Nov. 8.

I caught up with Williams in Mississippi where she was about a month into a national tour that runs through February. The actress is returning to the "Nunsense" family of creator Danny Goggin as his show business savvy Mother Superior -- Williams worked on the original version of the show that has inspired many sequels.

"It's a wonderful part. The travel is a challenge, but it's fun, too, to see some of America I've never been to before. I keep thinking I should get a map and put pins in every place we are playing. Today we saw cotton fields in Mississippi," she said.

Williams has done theater tours before, but this is the first one with lots of one night stands, so she is glad to be in a troupe that gets along.

"It's a fabulous cast and they are great company. Which is a good thing because if you were traveling in such close quarters on a bus for so many months (with people who didn't get along) fistfights would break out," she said, laughing.

The actress was getting ready to take a brief break from the tour to speak at a special 40th anniversary screening of "American Graffiti" in Nebraska.

"That's a real privilege. The last time I saw it was at a 25th-anniversary screening at the Director's Guild (in Hollywood) where George Lucas added a few extras to it that were beautiful," she said.

Because "American Graffiti" was already a period piece when it came out 40 years ago -- the story is set in 1962 -- it never seems to date.

"It just hangs there in time," Williams said. "There really is no time or space in `American Graffiti.' The music is iconic and it's an iconic coming of age story that seems applicable to any time.

"George had mentioned to us (during production) that it was set in the last age of innocence before the country went down that path of grief and cynicism," she said of the film taking place a year before the assassination of President Kennedy changed the national mood and set the stage for the rest of that turbulent decade.

Williams still remembers how Universal had virtually no confidence in the film after it was finished.

"They shelved it for quite a while, but some of the musical groups that had songs on the soundtrack got copies of the movie and started screening it and it gained all of this underground popularity. Today, it would be like something going viral on the Internet," she said.

It wasn't until producer Coppola offered to buy the film and release it himself that Universal got behind what was only the second film by Coppola's protege George Lucas (this was four years before "Star Wars" made the young filmmaker one of the richest and most powerful people in Hollywood).

The failure of studio people to grasp the high quality of what is now a classic film didn't surprise Williams.

"They're never a part of the everyday consciousness. Unfortunately, they sit outside of that, crunching numbers," Williams said.

The "Nunsense" tour is a combination of the new and the old that the performer is enjoying. "It's very familiar, but it's a totally different piece, too," she said.

"Nunset Boulevard" follows the latest exploits of the Little Sisters of Hoboken, who think they have been invited to perform at the Hollywood Bowl, but find out that they have been booked into the cabaret at the Hollywood Bowl-A-Rama.

Early on they find out that a movie producer is across the street doing auditions for roles in a new movie musical about the life of Dolores Hart, the movie star who became a nun. The sisters, thinking they are naturals for the material, race off to audition during their show's intermission.

Life will be imitating art at the Waterbury performance, which is a fundraiser for the Abbey of Regina Laudis in Connecticut, where Sister Dolores Hart resides.

"I can't wait to meet her. I can get what she did. It appears to be the opposite of (her Hollywood days), but you can see that she is a wonderful person and is using the same dynamic that she did as an actress. That personable energy. I think that you have to be creative to be a reverend mother," Williams said.